Armed Chechens Seize Moscow Theater
Published October 23, 2002
"Acts like these cannot but reinforce even more the international community's determination to fight every kind of terrorism in the firmest possible way," Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said in a statement.
Arafat said the "Palestinian leadership strongly condemns this terrorist act...and it stands beside the friendly Russian people and leadership in confronting this sinful aggression." Arafat then returned to planning the next wave of suicide bombings against Israel. Okay, I made that up, but it could still be true.
The BBC's Stephen Mulvey views the situation from Putin's point of view:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin was elected president as the man Russians thought could sort out Chechnya once and for all.
The horror of the Moscow hostage-taking therefore puts him in a difficult situation. Even with his sky-high approval ratings, it's a crisis that it would be dangerous for him to be seen to mishandle.
However, the fact that the conflict - which long ago ceased to be a daily concern of ordinary Russians - has now come to Moscow, could also work for him rather than against him.
For some it will confirm the view that a hard line was, and is, justified. This was the effect of a series of apartment block bombings before troops were sent back to Chechnya in 1999.
....How did a group of Chechen fighters travel to Moscow, and move, heavily armed through the city, without getting found out, or stopped? There is no easy way for Mr Putin, who was a security chief before he became a politician, to answer this.
....In one way, the incident will help Mr Putin, as it appears to support his view of the Chechen rebels as terrorists.
Russian citizens needed no confirmation of this, and some foreign governments had already come to the view that there were links between some of the Chechen rebels and al-Qaeda.
....For the Chechen rebels themselves - at least the more moderate elements, including the elected Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov - the incident is a public relations disaster.
For a long time, Western governments continued to urge Moscow to open negotiations with Mr Maskhadov, though less forcefully after 11 September 2001.
Already the US has ceased to recommend him as a suitable negotiating partner, and other countries are now increasingly likely to take the same view.
....Mr Maskhadov has long been weakened by the fact that the main financial backing for the rebel cause comes from the Muslim world supporting a jihad, or holy war.
This backgrounder from Deutsche Welle makes the Chechen/terrorism/militant Islam connection explicit:
- The situation calmed somewhat after a kidnapping in January 1996 prompted the Yeltsin regime to make moves toward allowing the creation of a separate state. That never materialized, however, and Putin has made anti-separatism a main cause.
- Armed Chechens Seize Moscow Theater
- Published: October 23, 2002
- Type:
- Section: Culture
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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Comments on this articleComments
Excellent John, thanks. You kind of figured the Russians wouldn't hesitate to characterize the situation as such.
So do the Russkies continue to oppose us on Iraq, or do we team up and get to work on removing this blight once and for all? And when we're done with the filthy French, we can go after the Islamofacists
The headline over at The Guardian is "Muslim Peace Activists Detain Russian Theatergoers in Mass Protest"
Okay, I made that up. But it's almost believable.
Why such an increase in activity (Bali, Moscow, Phillippines) when it would appear such terrorist activity would bring more allies to our side? These nutjobs need a course in game theory or marketing or something.
One thing though. Were any of us calling the Chechens 'terrorists' prior to 9/11? Probably not. I think most American right/left-wingers thought the Moscow apartment bombings were some sort of Russian conspiracy to allow Putin to re-invade Chechnya.
Actually, considering this country's isolationist bent at the time, most of us probably didn't really care.
It does cause me to rethink my view of Russian's war in Chechnya, particularly the second war. If I were the Russians, I'd pump the theater full of carbon monoxide, which is odorless and invisible, then drag out the hostages and try to revive them with oxygen. The "mining" activity described in news reports might make that impossible though, because you'd have to move very quickly after everyone passed out to save the hostages.
I certainly thought of the Chechen separatists as terrorists long before 9/11. As far as I'm concerned we should give Russia a free hand to deal with the problem in as brutal a fashion as they see fit.
Does anyone here know any Chechen/Russian history? Does it make no difference at all that Russia/USSR has treated the people there like shit since the Russian invasion and conquest of the land a century and a half ago? In this case, as in the case of Ireland post potato famine, "root causes" demonstrably exist and have little to do with religious fanaticism.
If you have a little time to read history, try
http://www.newsbee.net/moscow/chhistory.html
in which you will find the elegant solution of Stalin to the "Islamic fundamentalists" of his day (i.e. Muslims who resisted his authority): deport the whole population hundreds of miles away. Compared to the Russian war in 1995, that was pretty humane.
Everyone has legitimate grievances - what counts most is how you deal with them.
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You may want to include what the Russians are saying about this. Check out http://english.pravda.ru/
Moscow: Chechen terrorists take theatre
Chechen kamikaze squad take theatre with 1,000 hostages in Moscow
A group of between 20 and 30 kamikaze Chechen terrorists stormed a packed Moscow theatre tonight, threatening to blow the building up unless their demands are met. It is feared that due to the fact that their demands are unrealistic, they will prefer to become martyrs, rather than prisoners. ....